On The Podding Of Peas

I am blessed to be within walking distance of two of Britain’s Greatest Food Retailers, at the brow and foot of Donkin Hill in Caversham, which I refer to as Top and Bottom Coop. They’re very good on local and seasonal produce. Which is why, for the last few weeks, I have been coming home from the weekend top-up shop with bags of peas. Actual unshelled peas in pods.

Now. The humble frozen pea is, of course, a thing of simple delight that has a place in any time-conscious, thrift-aware chef’s repertoire. Simply presented alongside a shepherd’s pie. Folded into a pea and paneer curry. As part of a prawn-heavy paella (oh the pink against the green, I swoon into a Nigel Slater-style wafting fit at the joy of it all).

HOWEVS. Peas that you have podded yourself are a different prospect. The simple, mindful meditative state that comes from eviscerating the crisp crysalids is not an activity conducive to the mid-week supper grind. This is weekend activity. Ideally, it needs a big kitchen table, small children and a grandma to hand, sunlight streaming in through high kitchen windows.

I have none of those. Well, no, I have a grandma. She’s in her nineties, knotted with arthritis. If I showed her a pea pod, she’d spit in my eye. So I pod my peas in the front room, where the light is better. Up until this year, I can’t remember the last time I unzipped a pea pod. A simple process. Two bowls needed. Tug from the root end, taking off the stringy bit. The pod pops open with a pleasingly juicy snap. One skilful swipe with the thumb sends a spoonful of peas into one bowl. Another flick and the pods go into the other. Continue as required. The odd escapee will ping away under the sofa. Oh well.

A glass of wine and some loud rock and roll help the process along no end.

There’s a lot of waste with fresh peas. The pods take up twice as much volume as the precious legumes. These are, of course, eminently compostable, or you can simmer and blitz them to make a peapod purée that works remarkably well as a simple, delicate pasta sauce. Sieve well. No stringy bits needed here.

Growing peas always felt like a ball ache to me, but I’m very happy to give up a quiet portion of my weekend to the separation of a fresh bagful of English peas, and the contemplation of what to do with them afterwards.

If nothing else, my hands smell delicious afterwards. That’s a scent some enterprising perfumery should bottle.

The Skin Thing, or a reopening of negotiations with a rebellious biome.

This morning, I went for a swim. TLC and I were on a weekend away at a posh hotel, and she urged me to give the spa facilities a go. Twenty leisurely lengths of the pool and a dose of sauna heat and steam room sweat opened up my pores and left me achy but glowing.

At one point I shared the steam room with a Spanish guy in budgie-smugglers. We exchanged a friendly nod, and that was it. A simple, normal moment of small luxury.

It had been at least fifteen years since I had been able to walk into a pool or spa area with any hint of confidence. Even a year ago, the Spanish gentleman would have looked at me with a mix of horror and disgust, and probably walked right back out of the steam room.

(TW: The following contains graphic descriptions of medical symptoms).

Continue reading The Skin Thing, or a reopening of negotiations with a rebellious biome.

The Last Ride Of The White Buffalo

DATELINE: 22nd July 2018

Reading, Berkshire, UK

We were somewhere on Route 285, perhaps just outside Fairview, and I was deep into a fugue state. As I watched the browning landscape scud past the window to a soundtrack of 80’s goth-wave, the last three weeks swirled in my head, events sparking into focus for a moment, then popping away like a soap bubble. Continue reading The Last Ride Of The White Buffalo

Two Hours In New Mexico

DATELINE: July 17th, 2018

Somewhere on Route 285, skirting the Carson National Forest, NM

The storm had tracked us since Alamosa. As we slipped south past the border, it shouldered in, riding alongside like a good ole boy with bad teeth and a worse attitude. It was pretty darn clear it was looking to start something.

The tail end of our trip south had lost its shine. Hawkeye had struck again. His ‘slight detour’ to dip a toe into a different state took us in a loop around some of the more desolate and depressing sites New Mexico had to offer. Dead or dying farmland. Vast junkheaps piled high with the ransacked corpses of old trucks, the exoskeletons of ruined farmed equipment splaying out thorny limbs like gigantic fossilised insects.

Every building we passed was empty, windows boarded up or kicked in. Scattered stands of graying lumber stood like waiting funeral pyres. The gateway to a ranch that we could not see had deer antlers knotted over the uprights, ugly-white as a bad dental job in the frantic light that pulsed out from the heart of the storm. The gateway to another had a mannequin strung by its neck hanging from a cross post.

I hope it was a mannequin. In the shadow-carved light, it was so difficult to be certain.

The storm was still with us, effortlessly keeping up the pace. Every now and again it would fling out a handful of rain, just to keep our attention up. This wasn’t the clean, warm Colorado rain we had come to welcome. This was dirty, greasy stuff, oil-spill and septic run-off, smearing the bug-strike across the Buffalo’s windshield without ever letting it clear.

The storm grumbled, thick and heavy as the snort from a Harley’s drivetrain, a deep pulse shaking us about like beans in a can. Anytime now, the fucker would pounce. Just at the point where we were furthest from help, it would clench its bruise-dark fists and pound us into the blacktop.

We found a way west. Route 64. According to the map, heading into the heart of the Carson National Forest. Months without rain had turned the landscape into a patchwork of khaki and tan, like camouflage, as if New Mexico was trying to hide from itself. The thirsting ground would have gratefully accepted the punishment of the storm. It was too busy toying with us to care about opening up.

The leading edge of the cloud front mutated, or maybe it was our change of course that shifted our perception. It developed a snout, sharp as a shark’s tooth. An eye-shaped meniscus bulged into being. Colourless as bone at the inner edge, deepening to the flat grey of dead flesh towards the orbit. Within, where a flash of blue from the early evening sky would have given us a faint glimpse of hope, there was only darkness.

No. Not darkness. Lightning flickered in there, actinic forks and nets of light, gone before they’d really registered. A complex pulse of activity, like the workings of some vast, inhuman mind made visible, all the better to inspire dread.

We felt it, alright. Barreling down a desolate highway with a malevolent weather system at our shoulder, dread was a default. The radio had gone dead. There was no-one else on the roads. There was no sign of habitation. No lights in the houses we passed. No livestock in the fields. This was abandoned country, dead land. Tierra muerte.

For a while, we wondered if the apocalypse had already happened and we were just a little late to the party.

Finally, we hit Highway 84 at Tierra Amarilla and could start working north. The storm, bored now, tossed one last bucket of dirty water at us and turned away, sulking south. Its dark eye closed, its snout flattened. Just a weather front now. Whatever demon had possessed it for a while on a an evening in mid-July in the New Mexico hinterlands was gone. At Chama, just south of the border, civilization began to reassert itself. A petrol station open for business. Houses with lights on. A dog in a yard, barking joyfully as we span past.

We broke the Colorado border at Chromo and the sun cast aside the last of the cloud. We were bathed in red and gold dusk-light all the way home.

A day later we would visit a town best known for its resident cannibal and bounce a deer off the Buffalo’s rear offside.

But that’s a story for another campfire.

Strange Roads And Forgotten Highways

DATELINE: 12th July, 2018

The Rim Rock Road, part of the Colorado National Monument, nr. Fruita, CO.

John Otto was a bit of a strange one. A reclusive canyon-dweller, he was one of those guys for whom mid-nineteenth century America was made–a rugged individualist finding a place to call his own in the vast open spaces of the heartland.

He was a little late for the heyday, alas. But Otto’s spirit and love for the land north of Grand Junction he called home would have a lasting effect. In 1907 he began carving out paths and tracks to make the rugged canyons he trod so easily more accessible to the outside world. At the same time, he began agitating to make his ‘backyard’ into a place that everyone could enjoy. He was a recluse, but would happily abandon his privacy given any excuse to evangelize the spires and canyons amongst which he lived. Otto was tireless at writing petitions, conducting tours and seeking out sponsors to get the message out.

In 1911, his efforts were rewarded. President Taft signed papers that turned John Otto’s backyard into the Colorado National Monument. Otto was rewarded personally, with the creation of a new post–the Monument’s first custodian, with a stipend of a dollar a month. I get the feeling that he would have done it regardless of pay. He called the land ‘the heart of the world.’

Without him, we would not be in Fruita, Colorado, pointing the nose of the White Buffalo up onto the Rim Ridge Road.

Now, that road is a whole other story. 23 miles from Grand Junction to Fruita, it takes the high route up and through some of the most spectacular sights in John Otto’s backyard. 20 years in the making, carved out of the sparking red sandstone by gangs of young men with pickaxes, shovels and fistfuls of dynamite.

The Monument is geology laid bare. Millions of years of erosion have carved towers and sheets of rocks out of the landscape. They take on a myriad of forms–a pair of hands clasped in prayer, a couple kissing.

Steep-faced canyons drop hundreds of feet to green-scumbled valley floors. Brave souls can take the switchback trails that Otto cut into the rock down into these valleys, but they are not recommended if you’re unprepared. These are not paths to lightly tread. One false step and the express route to Plummetville awaits.

We stayed on the road, and chose to enjoy the views instead.

At sunset, those views change completely. The red rocks lose their angry hue in the face of the blazing crimson of the lowering sun. They blush instead, sweetening into coral and madder rose, lilac and damson. As we chased the gloaming back towards the jewel-lights of Grand Junction, a couple of thousand feet below, I thought again about John Otto, a man so intent on living life as he chose that his one attempt at normality, marriage to local artist Beatrice Farnham, foundered after three weeks. She left in despair, saying, “I tried hard to live his way, but I could not do it, I could not live with a man to whom even a cabin was an encumbrance.”

There was only ever room for one true love in John Otto’s life, and she would never try to make him change.

DATELINE: 12th July 2018

Somewhere on Highway 6, on the Colorado/Utah border

Hawkeye did it again. We had a little time to kill before our last stop of the day, so he coaxed the Buffalo in a westerly direction and fired us out towards Utah. Hawkeye being Hawkeye, he didn’t choose the obvious route–Interstate 70, a clean, fast road. Instead he hung a tight left at a half-horse town called Loma, and put us onto Highway 6.

Once, this would have been one of the main drags through the western part of the state. Now it’s neglected. The surface is unmaintained, the blacktop gently devolving to rubble and potholes that tested the Buffalo’s shocks. There are no services, no people, no ambulant life at all. Low, scrubby plains march off to the green hills of the McInnis National Park. We were utterly alone. No other vehicles passed us for the entire time we were on Highway 6. The silence was deep and full in our heads.

The border between Utah and Colorado is marked by a handmade sign, deliberately hammered at an angle to a post. A shot-pocked can of peaches sits alongside. There is a sense of utter isolation, of abandonment at this sentry post. We paused for photos, but were soon chased back onto the road. There was a distinctly eerie atmosphere about the place. The feel of somewhere haunted by a history that had been almost completely erased.

A few miles into Utah, there was a spur road back onto I-70 which we took with a sigh of relief. It ran on the other side of the McInnis Ridge, a greener and much more pleasant drive. Less than a mile separated us from the forgotten road that waited quietly to the north, a road that you would now actively have to seek out.

I wondered why the road was so completely un-used. Surely an enterprising person could set up a little 420-friendly operation close to the state line. A simple shack with a pull-in. You could even do it as a mobile, food-truck style business on the weekends. A way to perhaps bring a spark of life back to this forgotten highway.

Call it The Last Chance Cannabis Saloon. I might set up a Kickstarter.

DATELINE: 12th July 2018

Somewhere in the hills above Fruita, CO.

Like butter wouldn’t melt…

Eventually, Star and I came to an understanding. I would stop kicking her in the side, and she would stay away from the tasty snacks on either side of the trail and pick up the pace. That didn’t mean she wouldn’t try it on. She was too damn stubborn not to test the boundaries of our fragile relationship. Typical redhead.

I am no natural horseman. Donkeys at the seaside were always more my speed. But it seemed foolish not to give it a go while we were in the heart of cowboy country. Besides, I had dropped sixty bucks on a fine hat back in Denver. We took a recommendation from our landlord in Palisades and booked a sunset ride with the fine folks at Rim Rock Adventures.

‘How you doing back there, Rob?’ Crysta, our guide, looked back down the line at Star and I.. She was a rangy, loud blonde cowgirl, constantly cracking jokes and chatting away. I managed a shaky thumbs up. This would not beat me.

I could understand Star’s attitude. This was her fourth ride of the day. It was hot and dusty up on the trail. Given the choice, I certainly wouldn’t fancy being loaded up with 12 stones of lanky Brit at the end of a long shift. She had definitely given me a look when we were introduced back at the ranch. I could tell she was distinctly under-impressed.

Hence her refusal to stay with the group, lagging behind the line of horses that picked their way up into the hills. She’d follow along, sure. But she was gonna take her own sweet time about it, find her own path and if she spotted a tasty bit of grass along the way, well, why not.

Star and I quickly became the comic relief of the group. Over the course of the ride, my hat would blow off my head, Star would get herself tangled in her hitching loop, and I would nearly come out of the saddle when she suddenly decided to break into a trot on a steep uphill gradient. Star was definitely the boss here. I was just along for the ride.

But what a ride. The trail snaked up through the foothills of the McInnis National Conservation Area, skirting the edge of Devil’s Canyon before plunging back through sagebrush-fringed coves. You couldn’t do this road by car, and the steep inclines and declines would have been an exhausting chore by foot. ‘Trust your horses,’ Crysta said, and they brought us over the hills and home again.

The sun was setting as we arrived back at the ranch, and we dismounted, a little saddle-sore but eyes shining. TLC reported whenever she looked back to see how I was doing, I was grinning like a loon and cackling. I guess maybe Star and I got along a little better than I thought.

I gave my stubborn, greedy slowpoke a hug before we left. She leaned in and huffed out a hot breath from her velvety snout. I don’t think we’d ever be friends, but I’d like to hope we shared a little something as we clattered over the red rocks at the foot of the Coronado National Monument.

Who knows? Maybe she was just glad to get me off her back at last.

Four Feet In The Colorado River

DATELINE: July 7th, 2018

Adams Falls, The Kawaneechee Valley, nr. Grand Lakes, CO.

Adventure is only ever the turn of a wheel away for the Clan Of The White Buffalo. We were acclimating to the opening section of the Rocky Mountain National Park before hitting the Trail Ridge Road, when Hawkeye spotted a turn-off for a place called Adam’s Falls. We like us a waterfall. In we went. Continue reading Four Feet In The Colorado River